I have the same problem reviewing you as I do Courtney Milan. As in, do I really have the temerity to criticize such an amazing writer? Apparently the answer is yes because while Beguiling the Beauty was beautifully written, I wasn’t feeling the romance. This may be an “it’s not you, it’s me not liking the masquerade trope thing” but at the end of the book, I hadn’t been convinced of the HEA.

Venetia Townsend is one of the most beautiful women in all of the world. One look at her face when Christian de Montford, Duke of Lexington, was young man and he was dumbstruck and tumbled instantly in love. Unfortunately for Christian, Venetia was already married and it was his first realization that he, a pampered Duke, might be ordinary.

Christian felt as if he were falling from a great height.

He’d always considered himself a breed apart. Now he was just another sod who might yearn and strive, but never achieve his heart’s desire.

This love for her face festers into something hateful. When Venetia’s husband dies, in debt and near ruin, Christian chalks it up to Venetia’s vanity. When she remarries a year later to an older wealthy man and is rumored to be cuckolding the man, Christian pegs her as shallow. “Evidently Christian’s beloved was a shallow, greedy, selfish woman who injured and diminished those around her.”

Despite his intense dislike of her character, he still finds her beauty unparalleled and his lust for her seems unabated.
“Almost five years had elapsed since he last saw her. The passage of time had only enhanced her beauty. She was more radiant, more magnetic, and more dangerous than ever.

A wildfire raged in his heart. It didn’t matter what kind of woman she was; it only mattered that she become his.

He turned and walked away.”

He becomes obsessed with either her or his reaction to her. I was never certain. Were his actions driven by an unacknowledged self loathing or by his shallow judgment of her? Because he hasn’t yet had her, but is still obsessed, Christian denounces beauty and does so by obliquely referencing Venetia with just enough details in a Harvard lecture that those who are well versed in society knows that it is her.

Venetia conveniently is in the lecture hall, having brought her sister over to New England and away from a negative influence. Venetia’s unmarried sister, Helena, appears to be embroiled in an affair with a married man and Venetia and her sister in law Millie, conspire to bring the sister to the attention of the Duke in hopes that another man could spring Helena from the clutches of her improper relationship.

Sitting in the lecture hall, hearing herself being torn apart by a man she’s never met, but one she had admired from afar, was crushing. In a fit of anger, Venetia vows revenge. She will use ever guile she has ever accumulated and make Christian fall in love with her. Then she will break his heart. She does this while the two are sailing back to England from Harvard disguised as a German baroness, appearing veiled in the daytime and occluded from Christian’s gaze at night by the darkness.

The basis of their relationship is lies, vengeance and obsession. The primary problem I had was that my heart ached for Venetia and I didn’t feel that Christian was worthy of her. When Christian and Venetia carry on their veiled affair and Christian supposedly falls in love with Venetia, he falls in love with one person and it just so happens that he conveniently gets to match that one person with the one face that he’s lusted over, obsessed over for 10 years. But if you strip away the convenience, you still have Christian in love with one woman and obsessed with another. I never felt like Christian’s issues with Venetia were adequately dealt with.

After the two have supposedly fallen in love, Christian sees Venetia (not knowing she is also the Baronness he professes to love and to want to marry)

He wanted to make cast models of her. He wanted to take a set of precision calipers and measure every distance between her features. He wanted her blood and glandular fluids analyzed by the finest chemists in the world—there must be something detectibly different in her inner workings for him to respond so dramatically, as if he’d been given a drug for which science had yet to find a name.

But more than anything, he wanted to—

He yanked himself back to his senses: He was a man who had committed himself to another. The baroness might very well not reciprocate said commitment, but he expected more of himself when he gave his word.

This repeats itself. Christian can’t stop thinking of Venetia, a woman he barely knows, a woman whose actions are despicable to him; and hardly remembers the Baronness, the woman with whom he fell in love.

Christian views himself as a victim, Venetia the heartless beauty. Venetia knows her plan of revenge was wrong but somehow justified. Venetia’s great sin was to choose to punish Christian knowingly. Christian’s careless remarks weren’t so intentionally targeted. This is a beauty and the beast story which the Great Beauty being the beast in disguise and so in order to fall in love, the beauty has to be obscured for it, like the beast’s ugliness, informs incorrectly.

Yet, even if you can get past the misdeeds the two inflict upon each other, I could still not overcome Christian’s obsession with Venetia. If the Baronness had not been Venetia and someone else, Christian would have still be obsessed with another woman and in that, I could not find happiness in the ending. B-

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Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author, a lawyer, and a lover of pencil skirts. She spends her downtime reading romances and writing about them. Her TBR pile is much larger than the one shown in the picture and not as pretty.
You can reach Jane by email at jane @ dearauthor dot com

39 Comments

I just started Beguiling the Beauty this morning before work. I put it off ’til the end of the week because I wanted to have time to savor it. I’m crazymad for Sherry Thomas’s books and I know I probably have unrealistic expectations for this one (and the new series)–and your review is scaring me more than a little. But even if it’s a “bad” Sherry Thomas (if that’s possible), it’s still Sherry Thomas, right? So, if BTB isn’t quite up to the caliber of my two favorites (Not Quite a Husband and His at Night), I’m venturing forward with optimism.

I agree! Do real people really say they’re going to seduce someone and dump them? Is that a valid form of revenge? “I hate you, so let’s have sex.” I mean, for anyone over the age of nineteen?

I mostly felt the conflict just repeated and repeated instead of slowly shifting and changing as they got to know each other better. Then, at the end, they rush into each other’s arms and confront the gossips and ta-da!

But as you said at the beginning of your review, it’s hard to criticize an amazing writer. I gave it a solid B because a not-as-great Thomas book is better than many other books.

Sherry Thomas is one of those authors that you either like or don’t like because of her style and topics. I’ve only read two of her books so far, Not Quite A Husband and His At Night, both which I felt kind of meh about. That is not to say she isn’t a good author but to me she is not a very engaging storyteller. None of the romance in those two books were that strong at all, not to mention too passionate. She focused too much on setting herself apart from other writers in the genre by making her writings more sophisticated and subtle. In turn her prose and writings is too calculated for me, like she probably spent too much time structuring her sentences and grammars but in the meanwhile not remembering to develop characters and plots. While clear and lucid writing is important, creating characters and romance that we care about is even more important. In the end it came a bit too pretentious for me, I guess she is just not my cup of tea. Though other readers may appreciate her efforts to bring the often scorned historical romance genre up a notch in the literary ladder.

This was actually my favourite Sherry Thomas. I’ve liked her other books well enough, but they’ve never fully worked for me. I can’t pinpoint why exactly I liked this one so much, because I essentially agree with all the points made in the review and at times was quite annoyed with Christian, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Plus, I’m super excited for the next one in July. Marriage-of-convenience is my absolute favourite romance trope and I loved, loved, loved what I saw of the characters. Can’t wait!

I don’t think it “just so happens” or is a “convenience” that the woman Christian is obsessed with and the woman he falls in love with are the same woman. That’s the heart of the story. He falls in love with her at first sight, and when he gets to know her as a person whose face he can’t see, he falls in love with her all over again. That’s romance.

I had more trouble with Venetia’s desire for revenge, which didn’t seem to me to be so much unmotivated as misplaced. Tony deliberately and actively misled Christian, and as a result Christian held false beliefs about Venetia. Those false beliefs hurt him more than they hurt her, and he didn’t deliberately act on them in any way that hurt her — indeed, when it comes home to him that what he said in Cambridge has a potential ill effect on her in London, he does what is necessary to protect her social standing. Venetia is hurt by what he said, but it’s because it reopens the unhealed wound of her relationship with Tony, not because it displays Christian’s contempt. Christian is a stranger to her at that point, and I don’t think she really cares what he thinks about her. She can’t do anything about Tony, so she goes after Christian.

I also agree with Phyllis Laatch about the form her revenge takes. How does a Victorian woman, in particular, figure that having sex with a man is in any way going to “avenge” herself on him? How does anyone but a total narcissist think that she can seduce someone and break their heart?

I would agree it’s not the best book Sherry Thomas has ever written. That said, I liked it more than Jane. If you accept that Venetia’s beauty is such that it overwhelms–even after a first encounter–most everyone who interacts with her, I think it makes sense that the way she and Christian deal with one another is disastrously skewed. I don’t see her as a narcissist–I see her as someone whose beauty has limited her life so strongly that, when she wants to take our her anger at Christian, she does so through the tool that the world defines her by. She’s never had a healthy relationship with a man and has no idea how to. She and Christian both make awful and stupid mistakes in their relationship–to me, though, those mistakes were understandable.

I would give it an A-/B+. I think Jane brings up some good points, but I did find it beautifully written and I liked the homage to Judith Ivory’s “Beast.” I have to say that I really love romances that honestly depict the effect of beauty. So often beautiful heroines (and heroes) are a dime a dozen; I like books that make it clear that having extraordinary looks actually effects the way a person is viewed and treated.

@Dabney: But when she sets out to seduce him, she is explicitly not using her beauty (except, I suppose for the beauty of her voice and figure); she is veiled or in the dark. She’s out to seduce him and break his heart without using her beauty. That she apparently thinks she can isn’t really consistent with the rest of her characterization; in other ways she seems very vulnerable and insecure.

I wonder if she’s perhaps deceiving herself about her motives in going after him — maybe she doesn’t want revenge so much as she just wants him.

I don’t mean to be unduly critical, by the way. I’m with srs in this being my favorite Thomas. I thought the characters in Private Arrangements and Not Quite a Husband were almost unbearably cruel to each other, and they were apart for such a long time. Christian and Venetia don’t deliberately wound each other in the same way, and I like that much better.

Warning – some spoilers near end of this comment. I’m a huge fan of Thomas, I think I’ve read all her books, so I was thrilled to learn she had this new series coming out.
I loved the book & will definitely read the next two in the series. I loved the tension when we weren’t sure if Christian would learn Venetia’s identity. I also thought that the affair was well done. I do, however, have two complaints. First, I thought it was a little too PG. I remember finding the sex scenes in prior Thomas books particularly hot, whereas these were warm. Second, and most importantly, I thought the ending was very rushed and sudden. Really, if she went to the trouble of making Christian so angry, I think it needed a bit more time & effort to resolve. It may have been better, as I had been hoping for, that instead of anger, Christian felt relief at the woman he was in love with be revealed to be the woman he was obsessed with. His love seemed so strong and sure, I think it did not need to be quite so negative a reaction. I think that the baby device also cheapened the deep feelings that had earlier been expressed by the hero – he marries her out of duty only it appears.
Despite my criticism, I truly enjoyed the book & would give it an A- or B+ like someone suggested above.

Haven’t read this one yet, but wild horses couldn’t keep me away. I just skimmed the review and noted some outward similarities to Beast by Judith ivory. The acknowledged beauty of the heroine and the affair conducted on a ship while in darkness. I read Beast because I saw somewhere that Sherry Thomas cited it as one of her favorite Judith Ivory books, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the similarities were intentional. Perhaps as homage?

I’m almost finished with the book and I like it. Although I’ve enjoyed all of Sherry Thomas’ books, I especially like the vulnerability exhibited by the heroines in her last two books.

Most people would think beauty is the ultimate blessing, but it’s not if no one cares to look too deeply into that person’s thoughts and feelings. If your beauty is the only thing of worth, then what happens when that fades? Tony undermined Venetia’s confidence and Christian’s judgment hit at her vulnerability. She couldn’t strike back at Tony, but Christian was available. Also, Christian didn’t target Venetia, but made an offhand remark a continent away, whereas Venetia actually went to bed with Christian based on a series of lies.

Finally, I like the set-up for the next two books. Fitz, Hastings, Millie and Helena are interesting secondary characters.

OK–finished BTB today and, thank goodness, liked it more than Jane did. I’d give it an A/A-. The only thing I would have changed was the ending–not necessarily the outcome itself, but I wish it had been fleshed out a bit more.

BTW, I loved the cameos/references to characters from earlier books. First-time Thomas readers wouldn’t necessarily notice this or be thrown by it, but it’s a little treat for returning readers.

” But if you strip away the convenience, you still have Christian in love with one woman and obsessed with another.”

–> Jane, you expressed in one sentence why “Disguise” books almost never work for me. Yes, it is same woman the hero is falling for but you never get the impression that he’s aware of that even on an unconscious level. It’s convenient for him that the two different facets he loves happen to belong to the same woman.

For exemple, Elizabeth Hoyt’s The Raven Prince never worked for me. The hero is well on his way to being in love with the heroine when he gets scared, runs away to London and falls in lust/obsession with a mysterious masked woman who is of course the heroine in disguise. Romance fail. At least for me.

Strangely enough, Beguiling the Beauty worked for me. Maybe because Christian didn’t actually know Venetia before embarking on his affair with the Baroness. It didn’t feel too much like a betrayal. I was not 100% on board with the romance but the book was a delight to read. I’d been wanting to read Sherry Thomas for a while now but she’d never written a book that didn’t push some of my hot buttons. The storylines she often chooses are so far removed from what I like in a romance book that I stayed away from her. I often tried reading out of my comfort zone when there were rave reviews about a book but I gave up that practice a few years ago. There are far too many books that are exactly what I like to read to waste my time on books that don’t bring me pleasure, no matter how well-written they are.

I caved in for BtB because the heroine in disguise thing is a very minor annoyance compared to, say, estranged spouses being cruel to one another.

I don’t think I’ll read the second book in the series though. I’ll wait for the reviews before making up my mind but I’ve never liked heroes who not only overlook the heroine for years (romantically, not as a person) but also believe themselves in love with another woman. I’ll need to see the way his feelings are dealt with before deciding to take the plunge. If it’s a case of him still imagining himself in love with his childhood sweetheart for most of the book, I’ll stay away from the book.

Next I might try His at Night. It seems to be the other Sherry Thomas book that will appeal the most to me.

@Estelle: I really loved Ravishing the Heiress. When the two enter into a marriage, they are both young and the hero believes that the heroine is like him – in love with another man. He spends their whole marriage believing this so it’s not so much that the hero overlooks the heroine romantically but that he clings to a past romance because that is all he’s known. But once Millie starts to withdraw from him, he realizes that she is his best friend and more importantly, his love.

@Jane: I’m with Jane. I think his realization has been coming for years. It’s not until it’s time to act on his pact with his wife AND his childhood love comes back to town that he begins to realize how unsure he is of what he wants. The book goes back in between the past and the present, so it’s hard to say when his realization occurs.

@etv13: “How does a Victorian woman, in particular, figure that having sex with a man is in any way going to “avenge” herself on him? How does anyone but a total narcissist think that she can seduce someone and break their heart?

I have a problem with that also. That – coupled with the fact that I dislike the “masquerade trope” (how would one actually, really, carry that off?) and feel uncomfortable with the thought that someone could be so obsessed with a person, they have not even spoken to, for several years – makes this a no-read for me.

I have read and loved all of Sherry Thomas’s previous books, so I hope the next one is something I can get into.

@ Ros – same issues for Australia too! Makes me REALLY cranky…I have a hard time staying stubborn and not going paperback for her – Sherry Thomas & Meljean Brook’s Iron Seas series have been the ONLY ones I have broken for in the past…

@etv13: I didn’t see her as being narcissistic because she wasn’t ever presented as someone consumed by self interest. The idea that she could seduce someone comes from a place of confidence in a certain aspect of her personality, one that she doesn’t have much appreciation for either as it has caused her considerable grief her entire life.

I agree that it was not narcissism that made Venetia believe that she could seduce Christian. In fact, I am not even sure she believed she would be successful at it, and I don’t think that she would have even tried except for her own attraction to him that she obviously feels from the beginning.

That said, I also agree that there is an element of absurdity in saying – “I am going to punish him by having great sex with him for a week.” I think that 99% of the time, that plan would fail because the falling in love and resultant broken heart is not as easy to achieve as the seduction itself – hence, there would be no real punishment or revenge, just good sex.

I loved this book, and hate having to wait for the next one. I probably should have waited until all three were out before buying them, but oh well. I knew what I was getting myself in for, it’s Sherry Thomas.

I did have the same problem with the book that Jane did, I just couldn’t get behind the way that the Duke wrote off someone he didn’t know based on his own reactions to how she looked. It was explained as well as possible, but it still made me feel like he wasn’t good enough for Venita, who was fantastic.

Venita’s motives and personality, on the other hand, made perfect sense throughout. I thought that Thomas did a great job of showing how her reactions were formed by the way people treated her, and that people almost always treated her like the only reason she mattered was her beauty. Even in disguise, she probably wouldn’t have more than a second’s hesitation about her ability to entrance a man, or the fact that leaving him would crush him – her entire life was shaped by her beauty, and not in a good way.

I also thought the subject of her second marriage was handled really beautifully.

I don’t actually think Venetia is narcissistic, either. I think it’s a case of interference between a desired plot device and her characterization. Thomas is in good company here; if Shakespeare’s Juliet is the kind of girl who will marry her hereditary enemy and sleep with him under her parents’ roof, why the hell wouldn’t she just go with him to Mantua?

One of the things I like about Venetia, actually, is that she isn’t all about her beauty all the time. She wants to dig up bigger and better fossils! She successfully did dig up a huge honkin’ fossil as a teenager, and persuaded a whole bunch of people to help her do it. She married a gay guy because he was a friend of her family and they could be helpful to each other. I agree that her beauty is not by any means an unalloyed good to her, but it’s also not the be-all and sum-all of her existence even before the story starts and she gets involved with Christian.

@Jocelyn Z: Christian didn’t write Venetia off because of his reaction to how she looked; he wrote her off because Tony deliberately deceived him.

I think one lost opportunity in the book was showing Christian’s realization that he had been deceived and that what the veiled woman on the ship had told him about her husbands was really Venetia’s true history. But it was getting late and I was reading fast toward the end, so maybe it’s really there and I just missed it.

I never like the ‘disguise’ storyline. And almost always …… cross that, ALWAYS the disguised person turns out to be the one the other person hates in real life. I get lust at first sight but Christian dreaming about domesticity with her for nearly a decade ? Bah! … I get that Venetia was breathtakingly beautiful, but i don’t get this almost hypnotic effect that she has on everyone. The priest starts to stutter and offer(?) for her, Christian gets literally dazed every time he meets her …. That’s over the top. I was wondering if there was going to be a paranormal touch in the middle of the book, the magical beauty!
Plus, I hated the ending. The idea that two gossipy ladies would actually walk into a duke’s residence and threaten him, Venetia’s (non)apology, the rushed declarations….. I don’t know, but i wasn’t really rooting for the couple. C rated for me.
I think it’s time that I give up on Sherry Thomas. Not quite a husband was the first I read and i loved it. Absolutely loved it. After that i have read her entire booklist but she just doesn’t seem to work for me. I actually wanted to read ravishing the heiress but there was a chapter in this book where millie & fitz are discussing the choice of his next mistress over breakfast. That’s taking the ‘we are best friends’ thing too far. pass.

the ending did feel rushed. The one thing I noticed when picking up the book was how thin it is, and I was thinking how will things get resolved in a timely manner? No funny side characters sigh( well at least we’ll get them in another book but I wish it to be more than a teaser than the next book rather than important to the book’s ongoing situation). And they get rushed into, okay I actually love you confession. Good and bad in a way. the two busy bodies interupption was kinda weird and I was thinking she just wanted a convienent way to end it. I did like this book wayyy better than His at Night but it kinda felt like Harlqeuin to me… I did get teary at their angst as usual.. =D

i don’t care , i really don’t of what anyone think. this book is simply amazing to a degree that it restored my faith in romance book as i almost given up on them .first was Courtney Milan The Governess Affair (which is wonderful by the way ) then this book. i just felt happy reading it i felt the romance, the anger and love pains of the heroine, the hero is Duke an ordinary one not a fake rake or have tortured past, he is a simple guy with a self-confessed fixation. i just wished it never end and i wished it have a never ending epilogue. this book spoiled the rest of my to-read list i will never find anther like it.

Don’t do that. That’s exactly what I was doing to do because I had heard from several people that they weren’t really that convinced about BtB, but you’d deprive yourself!

I picked it up yesterday and started it last night and I *loved* it. I agree the ending needed another 30-50 pages, but then so do almost all historical romances these days. I blame publishers.

Anyway, as somebody who asked exactly that question yesterday on twitter and was told that I’d miss a lot of setup for books 2 and 3, I’m super glad I listened to Jennifer who said I ought to read it. Definitely, 1 of my favorites by Sherry.

[…] I pretty much always love Sherry Thomas, and this book was no exception (I gave it an A-/B+). I think what I liked most about it, besides the homage to Judith Ivory’s Beast, is that it featured a beautiful heroine and really made her beauty something that set her apart and even caused her problems at times. Beautiful heroines are a dime a dozen in romance (actually, it’s probably more like a penny a pound), but generally their beauty is not treated as something unusual or something that actually affects their lives, and I really appreciate it when a book does. You can read Jane’s review here. […]

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